# Queer (novel)
**Queer** is a short autobiographical novel by [William S. Burroughs](https://www.edgepedia.org/william-s-burroughs), written in 1952 as a sequel to his debut *Junky* but withheld from publication until 1985, in which the addict and expatriate William Lee pursues a hopeless romantic obsession with a younger man in Mexico City[1](https://groveatlantic.com/book/queer/). Its frank depiction of homosexual desire was one reason it went unpublished for more than thirty years[2](https://www.anagrama-ed.es/libro/compactos/queer/9788433976505/CM_433). Burroughs described the pair of books in a simple division: if *Junky* is a book about heroin, *Queer* is a book about withdrawal[3](https://elpais.com/cultura/2024-12-31/queer-un-formidable-daniel-craig-evoca-las-luces-y-sombras-de-william-burroughs.html).
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Author | William S. Burroughs (1914–1997), a founding father of the Beat Generation[1](https://groveatlantic.com/book/queer/) |
| Written / first published | Written in 1952; first published in 1985 by Viking[1](https://groveatlantic.com/book/queer/) • [4](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/248692405_Can_You_See_a_Virus_The_Queer_Cold_War_of_William_Burroughs) |
| Setting | Mexico City and the American expatriate scene of the early 1950s, in a sprawl Burroughs later called "Interzone", reaching from Mexico City to Panama[1](https://groveatlantic.com/book/queer/) • [2](https://www.anagrama-ed.es/libro/compactos/queer/9788433976505/CM_433) |
| Plot | William Lee, in heroin withdrawal, pursues the elusive Eugene Allerton, a Navy veteran 16 years younger, modeled on Adelbert Lewis Marker[1](https://groveatlantic.com/book/queer/) • [3](https://elpais.com/cultura/2024-12-31/queer-un-formidable-daniel-craig-evoca-las-luces-y-sombras-de-william-burroughs.html) |
| Status in Burroughs's work | Described by Grove as his only realist love story and a montage of comic-grotesque fantasies that paved the way for *Naked Lunch*[1](https://groveatlantic.com/book/queer/) |
| Definitive edition | Grove Press paperback edited by Oliver Harris, 208 pages, published September 6, 2022, ISBN 978-0-8021-6056-0, US list price $17.00[1](https://groveatlantic.com/book/queer/) |
| Adaptation | *Queer* (2024), directed by Luca Guadagnino, starring Daniel Craig as William Lee and Drew Starkey as Allerton[5](https://www.lemonde.fr/en/culture/article/2025/02/26/queer-in-mexico-daniel-craig-flees-existential-loneliness_6738578_30.html) |
## Composition and the long suppression
Burroughs wrote *Queer* in 1952, in the weeks of waiting for the trial in Mexico over the death of his wife [Joan Vollmer](https://www.edgepedia.org/joan-vollmer)[3](https://elpais.com/cultura/2024-12-31/queer-un-formidable-daniel-craig-evoca-las-luces-y-sombras-de-william-burroughs.html). He first mentioned his "queer novel" in a letter in March 1952[4](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/248692405_Can_You_See_a_Virus_The_Queer_Cold_War_of_William_Burroughs). The book did not appear for three decades[3](https://elpais.com/cultura/2024-12-31/queer-un-formidable-daniel-craig-evoca-las-luces-y-sombras-de-william-burroughs.html).
Two circumstances account for the delay. The Spanish publisher Editorial Anagrama states plainly that the novel was not published until 1985 because of its frank embodiment of homosexual desire[2](https://www.anagrama-ed.es/libro/compactos/queer/9788433976505/CM_433). The manuscript itself was also lost: a typescript surfaced only in 1984, having been presumed lost for about 30 years, and what remained was a fragment too short to call a novella, since Burroughs never finished the manuscript[6](https://realitystudio.org/scholarship/cutting-up-the-archive-william-burroughs-and-the-composite-text/).
**A reconstructed text.** To bring out the 1985 edition, Viking's publishers raided an unused manuscript to make a new ending, added to *Queer* as an Epilogue[6](https://realitystudio.org/scholarship/cutting-up-the-archive-william-burroughs-and-the-composite-text/). Burroughs wrote a new introduction in February 1985, and in it he revealed two things he considered key: that the whole book pivots around an event of which it never speaks, Vollmer's death, and that it was that event which made him a writer[3](https://elpais.com/cultura/2024-12-31/queer-un-formidable-daniel-craig-evoca-las-luces-y-sombras-de-william-burroughs.html). The critic Amy Taubin summarizes the introduction's most quoted admission: Burroughs stated there that if he had not killed his wife Joan, he would never have become a writer[7](https://www.enotes.com/topics/david-cronenberg/criticism/criticism/amy-taubin-review-date-march-1992). In the introduction Burroughs also recalled securing the means to keep writing after finishing the book, remarking that writing can function "as preventive vaccination"[8](https://bourgoisediteur.fr/catalogue/queer/).
## Content and themes
The novel is set in Mexico City during the early fifties and follows William Lee, the protagonist of Burroughs's debut *Junky*, a man afflicted with acute heroin withdrawal and romantic yearnings for Eugene Allerton[1](https://groveatlantic.com/book/queer/). Lee moves from bar to bar through the American expatriate scene, drinking tequila or mescal among wealthy expatriates, as his pursuit of desire breaks down[1](https://groveatlantic.com/book/queer/) • [9](https://apnews.com/article/cd0e1b7f0413395c14c7229dbe28f0be). Anagrama's description broadens the geography: the novel is set in an immense suburb that Burroughs would later define as "Interzone", stretching from Mexico City, which he calls the world capital of crime, to Panama[2](https://www.anagrama-ed.es/libro/compactos/queer/9788433976505/CM_433).
Grove's description calls the book both an unflinching autobiographical self-portrait and a coruscatingly political novel, Burroughs's only realist love story and at the same time a montage of comic-grotesque fantasies; as Lee breaks down, the trademark Burroughsian voice emerges, a maniacal mix of self-lacerating humor and the ugly American at his ugliest[1](https://groveatlantic.com/book/queer/). The Associated Press likewise calls it a confessional novella whose hero is partly Burroughs himself, an American hiding out in Mexico because he is a junkie and because Mexico was more permissive about heroin and about homosexuality than the United States at the time[9](https://apnews.com/article/cd0e1b7f0413395c14c7229dbe28f0be). A Washington Post review at first publication made the same autobiographical point: so many correspondences exist between Lee's experiences and Burroughs's own that the two books read as disguised confessional autobiography in the manner of Céline and [Henry Miller](https://www.edgepedia.org/henry-miller)[10](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/1985/12/29/mexican-joyride-the-apprenticeship-of-william-burroughs/2037a7bc-6000-4a70-8027-fc9cf52ef519/).
## Relation to *Naked Lunch* and later editions
*Queer* stands at the origin of Burroughs's major work. The scholar Oliver Harris, whose critical case for the novella drove his book *William Burroughs and the Secret of Fascination* (2003) and his revised edition of the text (2010), writes that although *Queer* will never approach the literary status or cultural reach of *Naked Lunch*, the publication of Burroughs's "slight, incomplete early novella was a complete game changer"[11](https://ebsn.eu/scholarship/reviews/not-everything-is-permitted-a-review-of-luca-guadagninos-queer-by-oliver-harris/). A Journal of American Studies article likewise ties the origins of *The Naked Lunch* to the development of material from *Queer*[12](https://www.keele.ac.uk/media/keeleuniversity/fachumsocsci/sclhumss/americanstudies/staffprofiledocuments/oliverharris/jasarticle.pdf), and a chronological survey of Burroughs's early work lists *Junky* (1953), *Queer* (written 1951–53), *The Yage Letters* (written 1953), and *Naked Lunch* (written 1955–57) as the sequence in which his voice took shape[13](https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt2204rr5).
The 1985 first edition therefore contains text that is not simply Burroughs's 1952 writing: on publication the book acquired new sections alongside its new historical context[4](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/248692405_Can_You_See_a_Virus_The_Queer_Cold_War_of_William_Burroughs), including the assembled Epilogue[6](https://realitystudio.org/scholarship/cutting-up-the-archive-william-burroughs-and-the-composite-text/). Later editions reworked the text again. A 25th-anniversary edition was issued in the United States and translated editions followed, including Anagrama's Spanish version and a Brazilian edition of 144 pages[2](https://www.anagrama-ed.es/libro/compactos/queer/9788433976505/CM_433) • [14](https://www.companhiadasletras.com.br/livro/9788535928440/queer). The current definitive [Grove Press](https://www.edgepedia.org/grove-press) edition, published September 6, 2022, on the seventieth anniversary of the year of its writing, carries a contextualizing introduction by Harris[1](https://groveatlantic.com/book/queer/).
## The 2024 film adaptation
Italian director [Luca Guadagnino](https://www.edgepedia.org/luca-guadagnino) adapted the novel as *Queer* (2024), with a screenplay co-written with Justin Kuritzkes and [Daniel Craig](https://www.edgepedia.org/daniel-craig) as William Lee[15](https://time.com/7017230/queer-review-daniel-craig/). Craig's casting initially struck Spanish commentators as surprising for a film about the American writer; Drew Starkey plays Allerton, in a performance [El País](https://www.edgepedia.org/el-pais) describes as polished and cold, and Jason Schwartzman plays a caricature of Allen Ginsberg[3](https://elpais.com/cultura/2024-12-31/queer-un-formidable-daniel-craig-evoca-las-luces-y-sombras-de-william-burroughs.html).
The film is faithful to its source for roughly the first two-thirds, then expands considerably in a final section set in the heart of the [Amazon](https://www.edgepedia.org/amazon-river-brazil), drawing also on *The Yage Letters*, Burroughs's correspondence with Ginsberg about his experience with ayahuasca[5](https://www.lemonde.fr/en/culture/article/2025/02/26/queer-in-mexico-daniel-craig-flees-existential-loneliness_6738578_30.html) • [3](https://elpais.com/cultura/2024-12-31/queer-un-formidable-daniel-craig-evoca-las-luces-y-sombras-de-william-burroughs.html). Grove's 2022 reissue had been announced as set for adaptation by Guadagnino starring Craig before the film was made[1](https://groveatlantic.com/book/queer/), and the film's success prompted new attention to the long-neglected book[16](https://elpais.com/cultura/2026-09-05/como-atravesar-el-infierno-de-william-s-burroughs-en-el-siglo-xxi.html).
## References
1. [Queer, Grove Atlantic (publisher page for the Grove Press edition)](https://groveatlantic.com/book/queer/)
2. [Queer, William S. Burroughs, Editorial Anagrama](https://www.anagrama-ed.es/libro/compactos/queer/9788433976505/CM_433)
3. ['Queer': un formidable Daniel Craig evoca las luces y sombras de William Burroughs, El País (2024)](https://elpais.com/cultura/2024-12-31/queer-un-formidable-daniel-craig-evoca-las-luces-y-sombras-de-william-burroughs.html)
4. [Can You See a Virus? The Queer Cold War of William Burroughs, Journal of American Studies (via ResearchGate)](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/248692405_Can_You_See_a_Virus_The_Queer_Cold_War_of_William_Burroughs)
5. ['Queer': In Mexico, Daniel Craig flees existential loneliness, Le Monde (2025)](https://www.lemonde.fr/en/culture/article/2025/02/26/queer-in-mexico-daniel-craig-flees-existential-loneliness_6738578_30.html)
6. [Cutting up the Archive: William Burroughs and the Composite Text, RealityStudio](https://realitystudio.org/scholarship/cutting-up-the-archive-william-burroughs-and-the-composite-text/)
7. [The Wrong Body, Amy Taubin review of Cronenberg (eNotes)](https://www.enotes.com/topics/david-cronenberg/criticism/criticism/amy-taubin-review-date-march-1992)
8. [Queer, William S. Burroughs, Christian Bourgois éditeur (French edition with the February 1985 introduction)](https://bourgoisediteur.fr/catalogue/queer/)
9. [Movie Review: Daniel Craig is a revelation in 'Queer', Associated Press (2024)](https://apnews.com/article/cd0e1b7f0413395c14c7229dbe28f0be)
10. [Mexican Joyride: The Apprenticeship of William Burroughs, The Washington Post (1985)](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/1985/12/29/mexican-joyride-the-apprenticeship-of-william-burroughs/2037a7bc-6000-4a70-8027-fc9cf52ef519/)
11. [Not Everything Is Permitted: A Review of Luca Guadagnino's Queer, by Oliver Harris, European Beat Studies Network](https://ebsn.eu/scholarship/reviews/not-everything-is-permitted-a-review-of-luca-guadagninos-queer-by-oliver-harris/)
12. [The Queer Cold War of William Burroughs, Journal of American Studies 33.2 (1999), PDF via Keele University](https://www.keele.ac.uk/media/keeleuniversity/fachumsocsci/sclhumss/americanstudies/staffprofiledocuments/oliverharris/jasarticle.pdf)
13. [Hip Sublime: Beat Writers and the Classical Tradition, JSTOR](https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt2204rr5)
14. [Queer, William S. Burroughs, Grupo Companhia das Letras](https://www.companhiadasletras.com.br/livro/9788535928440/queer)
15. [Daniel Craig Offers Himself Up Completely to the Shimmering Sensuality of Queer, TIME (2024)](https://time.com/7017230/queer-review-daniel-craig/)
16. [Cómo atravesar el infierno de William S. Burroughs en el siglo XXI, El País (2026)](https://elpais.com/cultura/2026-09-05/como-atravesar-el-infierno-de-william-s-burroughs-en-el-siglo-xxi.html)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Literature and written works › Creative written works and worlds › Prose fiction › Standalone novels › LGBTQ-themed standalone novels*
*Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Sep 30, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Sep 30, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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